The White House launched a behind-the-scenes drive to save Bill Clinton's presidency yesterday, less than 24 hours after he became the first American president in 130 years to face a Senate impeachment trial.

Mr Clinton's advisers have begun secret consultations with Senate Republicans on possible compromise deals, in which the president would be censured and perhaps fined, thus avoiding a trial which some experts say could last for up to six months.

The Northern Ireland peacemaker Senator George Mitchell, a former Senate, majority leader, is expected to be called in to spearhead the attempt to strike a deal.

Mr Clinton said on Saturday that he intended to fight to remain in the White House until "the last hour of the last day of my term" and to resist calls to resign in favour of Vice-President Al Gore.

As the president took his daughter, Chelsea, to church yesterday, the White House chief of staff, John Podesta, said Mr Clinton would not step down.

"I think if the president were to resign under these circumstances, it would weaken the presidency, it would weaken the constitution, it would undermine the process the Founding Fathers put in place. It would be a bad thing for America," Mr Podesta said.

As Washington drew breath yesterday after four days of tumultuous political crisis amid the now suspended US assault on Iraq, opinion polls showed continued strong ratings for Mr Clinton but a rise in those who want him to resign and bring the constitutional standoff to an end.

An NBC poll taken on Saturday showed Mr Clinton's support rose from 68 per cent to 72 per cent after the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment. Sixty-two per cent said he should serve out his term - up 11 per cent from a survey on Tuesday.

But a Newsweek magazine poll showed a rise to 44 per cent of those wanting Mr Clinton to resign. Other polls showed fewer people backing resignation. This is one indicator the White House is watching closely, anxious to prevent calls for the president to step down from snowballing within the apparently still loyal Democratic Party.

There were early hints that some Republicans shared the White House aim of averting a long and humiliating trial which would lock up Congress, presidency and supreme court business.

"There has to be some consideration to what you do that is the best under the circumstances to resolve this matter in the best interests of the country," Orrin Hatch, the Senate judiciary committee chairman and a senior Republican, said yesterday.

Mr Hatch called on the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, to conduct a private straw poll of senators to see whether Mr Clinton is likely to be convicted.

Mr Lott is personally in favour of convicting Mr Clinton, but the White House be lieves that his statement leaves room for the Senate to vote to end the trial. "The timing will depend greatly on the president and his lawyers," Mr Lott said after the House vote.

The two articles of impeachment cover perjury in the president's August 17 tes timony to the federal grand jury investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair, and obstruc tion of justice.

The message from the White House, however, is that the president's men are up for a deal on Capitol Hill along the lines of the bipartisan "censure plus" motion proposed last week by the former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole.

"The lawyers are beginning to look toward the next stage," a White House official said yesterday. "We believe some bipartisan solution can and should be found."

The events in the House on Saturday left the Republican Party stunned at the loss of its second Speaker in less than two months. The shock resignation of the Speaker-elect, Bob Livingston, only weeks after he forced his predecessor Newt Gingrich to quit, left the Illinois congressman Dennis Hastert as the front-runner for the post.

Meanwhile, Larry Flynt, the publisher whose investigations into congressional sex lives forced Mr Livingston to give up the post of Speaker, has threatened to release details on up to a dozen other Republicans before Congress reconvenes in January.